


Fragments and Forgiveness

by lungsieku



Category: Monument Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Exposition, Gen, Pre-Canon, idk what to call this I just wanted to imagine what was going through Ida's head before the game, if I write more I'll get to shippy stuff but it's not a priority, there may or may not be future chapters coming
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lungsieku/pseuds/lungsieku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ida falls in love with the sacred geometry, steals it, and deals with the consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments and Forgiveness

The first time Ida saw the room with the geometry, she was very young. Her parents held her hand and walked her slowly around the cluster of monuments, and explained in low, reverent voices that those seemingly small and innocuous shapes were the very stitches that held their entire world intact. But Ida was not listening. Instead, she gazed upwards at the glowing spheres and stars and everything in between, perched upon their respective altars, and brimming with wonder, reached a hand out to touch them. That hand was jerked away by one of the Storytellers, who stood, ever watchful of the sacred relics. The elder spoke to her as if she had just wounded him, and gripped her hand so tight that Ida cried out. He explained that no harm could ever come to the geometry, that only the Storytellers, gifted with the enlightenment could handle them. Any other with a mortal heart, full of greed and selfishness, was unworthy. As she was led away more gently by her parents, they told her that one day she would rule, and it would be her responsibility to ensure the geometry was always protected. With eyes teary from amazement and the blinding splendor of what rested in that room, Ida swore she would never let any harm befall those strange and beautiful relics. For Ida had fallen in love with the geometry on that day. From then on, those glorious images lingered forever behind her eyes. They lit up her dreams every night. Ida returned to the room with the geometry every day without fail. And every time, she longed even more to reach out and simply touch one of the shapes, for she was sure if she did she would receive the same enlightenment the Storytellers boasted of. What better way was there for her to protect the geometry, then by understanding it completely? 

On Ida’s sixteenth birthday, her parents gave her a gift. An important relic, they said it was. A conoid crown, capable of hiding all manner of things within it. And it was true, Ida marveled, as she reached her whole arm inside, only to have it vanish, beyond the physical barriers of the headpiece’s exterior. It could bend and shift the fabric of the world, much like the geometry, Ida’s parents told her, knowing any mention of the geometry would grasp her attention. They were correct, and Ida grew quickly endeared to the gift. She wore it often, and at night, would hold the opening of it to her face and listen to the gentle hum of the cogs of the universe within it. She would whisper to it sometimes, or sing, and let the echoes of her voice recoil off the waves of the droning cosmos, returning and returning to her.

In the night after her coronation, long after all the Storytellers had retreated to their chambers, Ida crept from her bed and to the room with the monuments and geometry. In the silence of the night, she could hear clearly the singing of the relics. They shined like stars against the indigo gloom. With her favorite hat in hand, Ida’s heart held no trace of uncertainty, no fear of consequence. She had never felt more central in the universe’s will than at the moment she reached out a hand to the geometry, and touched it at last. 

One shape, a star tetrahedron, came free from its monument with little resistance. When she slipped it inside the expanse of her conoid crown, the first tremor shook the earth. The other monuments trembled and the shapes atop them flickered. Then the sky came loose.

Ida’s only instinct as the world stretched and tore, was to save the geometry. So she ran, and took them all in her arms and cast them into her hat where she knew nothing would hurt them. She did not think, until the floor melted into pitch black emptiness, that perhaps the Storytellers had been right. She was unworthy.

As she fell helplessly through space, and watched the fragments of the universe break into smaller and smaller pieces, Ida did not notice her tears drift from her eyes like small crystals, until they joined with the ruin above her in a wicked, mocking dance. And so she fell, fell through the seams of the world that she’d torn with her own unworthy hands, until the silent abyss of oblivion showed mercy, and accepted her into its arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I really just love this game and wanted to write something that is my interpretation of what happened before the events of the game. I just want to get inside Ida's head.


End file.
